Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Many people (or “subscribers”) use mobile devices, such as wireless telephones, wireless e-mail devices, wirelessly-equipped computers (such as handheld, tablet, or laptop computers), or other types of wireless communication devices, to communicate with one or more Radio Access Networks (RANs). A typical RAN includes one or more base stations that radiate to provide wireless-communication service to mobile devices within a given geographical coverage area. Depending on the specific underlying technologies and architecture of a given wireless communication system, various RAN elements may take different forms. In a code division multiple access (CDMA) system configured to operate according to IS-2000 and IS-856 standards, for example, the base station is usually referred to as a base transceiver system (BTS). In a universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS) configured to operate according to Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards, however, the base station is usually referred to as an eNodeB. Other examples exist as well.
A typical RAN also includes a number of additional network elements that communicate with one another and/or the base station and that thereby enable mobile devices to communicate with one or more remote packet-switched networks. Such additional network elements may include, for example, a mobility management entity (MME), a serving-gateway (SGW), and/or a packet-gateway (PGW), among other examples. The communication path that includes the network elements that enable a mobile device to communicate with a remote packet-switched network is sometimes referred to as a “backhaul communication network,” or “backhaul” for short.
In operation, the RAN generally establishes one or more bearer services for managing communications between mobile devices and packet-switched networks over the backhaul. Broadly, bearer services can be classified into two categories based on the nature of the quality of service (QoS) they provide. First, Minimum Guaranteed Bit Rate (GBR) bearer services have an associated GBR value for which dedicated network resources (such as bandwidth, resource blocks, timeslots, and transmission power, among other examples) may be permanently allocated at the time the bearer service is established. Second, Non-GBR bearer services generally do not guarantee any particular bit rate. For Non-GBR bearer services, network resources are not typically allocated permanently.
A mobile device may run multiple applications (such as conversational voice, streaming video, WWW, e-mail, and FTP, among other examples) at a given time, and each such application may have different QoS requirements. In order to support multiple QoS requirements, different respective bearer services may be established, each having a different QoS. Thus, the respective bearer service that is established for a given application is typically established based on the application itself. For instance, GBR bearer services are normally used for various “high-priority” applications including, for instance, voice-over IP (VoIP) or conversational video streaming. On the other hand, non-GBR bearer services are normally used for relatively “low-priority” applications such as web browsing or FTP transfer. The bearer service that is normally used for a given application may be referred to as the “standard bearer service” for the given application.